“Replacing jet fuel with biomass would require the UK to give up 50% of its agricultural land to sustain current passenger levels,” the Independent reports. This is according to a new report from the Royal society which investigates the government’s “jet zero strategy”, published last year, the newspaper says. It continues: “In examining how the aviation industry can reach net-zero, the authors said there is no single, clear alternative to kerosene, with biomass requiring huge tracts of land and other options, such as hydrogen, ammonia and synthetic fuels requiring a massive increase in renewable energy production.” The Times adds: “Using a fast-growing grass, miscanthus, would require between 33 and 55% of agricultural land. Opting for rapeseed would see the figure jump to 68% of the 18.8m hectares of UK farmland.” BBC News notes that 12.3m tonnes of jet fuel are used annually in the UK. It adds that “London Heathrow is the largest global user of biofuels but it accounts for just 0.5% of the airport’s fuel”. According to the Daily Mail, former transport secretary Grant Shapps pledged last year that the UK’s aviation sector will be green by 2050, stating that “guilt-free flying is within our reach”. However, it continues: “The report suggests it will be unlikely that the UK will reach its goal of getting all domestic flights to be ‘jet zero’ – i.e. producing no net greenhouse gas emissions – by 2040 and all international flights by 2050.” And the Guardian notes that aviation drove 8%  of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. (See the twitter thread by Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss, who has made a series of charts based on the Royal Society’s findings.)

In other UK news, the Independent reports that Lidl has become the latest supermarket to start rationing fruit and vegetables amid country-wide shortages. The Evening Standard reports that food minister Mark Spencer has “summoned” supermarket chiefs to explain what they are doing to get shelves stocked again. And the Press Association reports that “drivers leasing new electric cars are being overcharged by hundreds of pounds each month, according to a report”.

Antarctic sea ice has reached a new record low, the Independent reports. According to the newspaper, preliminary data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the 2023 Antarctic sea ice minimum is the lowest in 45 years of satellite data. The paper continues: “Antarctica reached its minimum extent for the year at 691,000 million square miles on 21 February, researchers said, beating the record low set in 2022 by 52,500 square miles.” France24 adds that the NSIDC will issue its final numbers on Antarctic sea ice extent in early March.

A poll of more than 12,500 businesses and around 680 authorities has found that “investment in green technology in the EU is being held back by a lack of skilled workers”, the Financial Times reports. According to the paper, more than 80% of companies and 60% of local authorities polled said that a skills shortage, particularly in the engineering and digital sectors, was preventing projects that target climate change from going ahead. It adds: “The warning comes as the EU prepares to increase support for clean technology amid mounting competition from the US for green investment.” Separately, the paper has published a story under the subheading: “EU officials fear Biden’s climate law will undermine the bloc’s own efforts to drive green investment.” Meanwhile, the Times reports that US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm held talks with her UK counterpart, Grant Schapps, and has said that “America is working to address British and European Union concerns over the Inflation Reduction Act amid accusations that it is protectionist”. (Separately, the Times says that the UK risks being “sidelined” in the “funding war” between Washington and Brussels.)

In other European news, Reuters reports that “Germany has asked the European Union to propose rules allowing combustion-engine cars that run on CO2-neutral fuels to be sold in Europe after 2035, the date by which the EU has agreed all new cars should have zero emissions.” Elsewhere, the newswire reports that “France is planning a meeting on Tuesday with 12 other European Union countries, with the aim of building an alliance of states to advocate for nuclear power in EU energy policies”.

Back-to-back hurricanes that hit the same region of the US are happening more often, according to new research covered in the Independent. “The deadly storm duet that used to happen once every few decades could happen every two or three years as the world warms from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas,” the paper says. It adds that Louisiana and Florida have already seen the impact of “back-to-back” storms. (See “New climate research” below.) Meanwhile, Axios covers new research, which finds that “the risks of hurricane-caused wind damage will grow along the East and Gulf coasts over the next 30 years and expand into inland areas previously thought to be out of reach for most of these storms”. And a Washington Post interactive shows the shifting risk of hurricane damage over the coming decades. It notes that one in “three Americans may face risk by mid-century as winds are projected to reach further inland, northward”.

This comes as Reuters reports that “Southern California is bracing for a series of weak storms that will bring wind and rain this week to coastal areas while Northern and Central California mountain communities could see more heavy snow”. The Hill reports that “tens of thousands of Californians were still without power on Monday morning, after an unusual bout of winter weather battered the state with rain and snow this weekend”. Axios also covers the impending storm.

In other US news, Politico reports that Joe Biden “has been travelling the country to tout the job creation boom his billions of dollars in clean energy spending will bring”, but that the companies he is promoting are facing a “struggle” to hire enough people.

Greta Thunberg and dozens of activists are protesting against a wind farm that the Norwegian energy ministry is planning to build on land traditionally used by the Sami indigenous people, Politico reports. According to the outlet, the activists “occupied the entrance to Norway’s energy ministry in Oslo on Monday” to protest against the construction of six onshore wind farms on the Fosen peninsula in central Norway. The protest marks 500 days since the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled that the turbines’ construction violated the rights of the Sami people, who have been using the land to raise reindeer for centuries, it adds. The Financial Times says that Thunberg is accusing Norway of “green colonialism”. It adds that she called it an “international scandal” and “completely absurd” that Norway was ignoring the Supreme Court ruling. Thunberg told Reuters: “Indigenous rights, human rights, must go hand-in-hand with climate protection and climate action. That can’t happen at the expense of some people. Then it is not climate justice.”

Government ministers could force energy companies to return millions of pounds held in surplus to customers’ accounts, according to an Independent “exclusive”. It continues: “Ministers intend to press the chief executive of Ofgem to ensure customers get their money back swiftly and easily and prevent suppliers from building up large consumer credit balances in the first place. In 2021, Ofgem said that automatic repayments could see as much as £1.4bn returned to customers. The money would average around £65 if split between 21m households. But as energy prices have soared, reports earlier this year suggest the amount being held in energy accounts has swollen to between £2 and £9bn. Energy firms have said that extra cash paid in the summer months helps customers afford higher bills during the colder, darker winter. But last year an independent report commissioned by Ofgem, from the energy analysts Oxera, found that ‘rather than fluctuating around 0’, accounts were in credit to the tune of 40% of their annual bill on average across the year.”

This comes as the Independent reports that “Ofgem has announced households will pay up to £500 more on energy bills – despite its price cap falling by £1000 from April”. The Daily Telegraph says that the energy regulator will cut the price cap from £4,279 to £3,270 in April. The Guardian notes that the government’s energy price guarantee and its £400 discount scheme subsidise household bills will keep typical household bills around £2,100 per year. The paper adds that chancellor Jeremy Hunt faced “renewed calls” on Monday to postpone a planned cut in support for household energy costs. According to the Times, energy secretary Grant Schnapps is “very sympathetic” to these calls and is “working very hard” with Hunt on the issue. The Press Association reports that Shapps met his US counterpart for the first time on Monday and “committed the UK to greater energy independence through nuclear and renewables”. The Press Association reports that the Scottish government has called for the UK government to continue the energy price guarantee at its current rate. Elsewhere, the Guardian reports that energy minister Graham Stuart “​​refuse[d] to apologise for rising bills” during a Conservative Environment Network net-zero conference. Instead, Stuart blamed the Labour government – last in office in 2010 – the paper says.

In other UK news, BBC News reports that the first nuclear reactor for the Hinkley Point C power station has arrived in Somerset. The Daily Mail also covers the news. Meanwhile, a large group of green campaigners, business leaders and prominent figures are protesting amid fears that the government is “quietly planning to renege on promises to lift the ban on onshore windfarms in England,” according to the Guardian. And, separately, a Guardian exclusive reports that a cross-party group of MPs and peers has recommended that “the UK will need to embrace innovative, community-based solutions to environmental and energy problems if it is to have any hope of meeting looming net-zero deadlines”.

With the annual “two sessions” meeting approaching, members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, the country’s top political consultative body, have “swarmed into Beijing, bringing with them proposals largely focused on improving all walks of people’s lives, especially education, the medical system, environmental protection and birth rate”, reports the Global Times. The state-run newspaper notes that the China Association for Promoting Democracy – one of the “eight legally recognised minor political parties…under the direction of the Chinese Communist party” – issued a proposal to “speed up expanding the scope of the carbon emissions trading market and improve the calculation system of carbon emissions, so as to hasten the country’s pace toward having CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060”. It also suggests that the government should “speed up its legislation to cope with climate change and reach the goal of carbon neutrality”, as a legal basis for society, according to the proposal.

Meanwhile, Politico reports that John Kerry will “stay in his role” as president Joe Biden’s special climate envoy “at least through this year’s UN climate talks set for December in Dubai, ending speculation that the US’s top climate change diplomat may soon depart”. It says that Kerry’s relationship with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, has been a “rare bright spot” between the US and China, adding that Kerry has “sought to carve out a separate lane to discuss climate with China, the world’s top emitter”. Reuters says that foreign ministers from around the world will meet in New Delhi for the 1-2 March meeting of the G20 “in the shadow of Russia’s war in Ukraine and spiralling US-China tensions”, with host India “hoping that issues like climate change and Third World debt are not overlooked”.

The Financial Times quotes Meg O’Neill, chief executive of Woodside, Australia’s largest oil and gas group, who says the outlook for the sector will “depend on the strength of recovery in Europe and Chinese demand for gas after Beijing dismantled the zero-Covid curbs that hampered its economy”. Forbes carries an interview with Jiang Lin, an “internationally renowned” expert and a lead author of new research from the University of California, Berkeley, which shows that China could “reach 80% carbon-free electricity as early as 2035 without increasing costs, adding new coal, or sacrificing reliability”. He says: “One of China’s main challenges is how to manage the phasedown and phaseout of its huge stock of unabated coal power plants: could it really afford to invest more in fossil ‘bridge fuel’ infrastructure including new coal and natural gas while meeting its domestic and international climate targets?” Finally, the state-supporting Global Times has a comment piece by Hua Weijia, one of its reporters, who writes: “One cannot interpret the plan of increasing coal capacity as a signal that the Chinese government will encourage or expand the coal consumption, nor maliciously misinterpret China’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and build a green economy.” (See the latest Twitter thread by Lauri Myllyvirta on factors behind China’s latest coal consumption statistics, which builds on his recent guest post for Carbon Brief.)

More than 60 researchers have written an open letter arguing that more research is needed into solar geoengineering techniques, the New Scientist reports. According to the outlet, the letter says: “While reducing emissions is crucial, no level of reduction undertaken now can reverse the warming effect of past and present greenhouse gas emissions.” Inside Climate News notes that the letter “comes after an even larger group of scientists and academics called for a strict ban on such ‘geoengineering,’ saying it could divert attention and resources from needed greenhouse gas cuts”. And the Washington Post reports that “members of the US intelligence community and other national security officials were worried enough last year to plot how to avert a war triggered by this kind of climate engineering”.

According to oil and gas consultancy Rystad Energy, emissions from fossil fuels are set to peak “within two years,” writes Bloomberg columnist David Fickling. The issue now is the “pace” at which the decline continues, he writes. This, Fickling concludes, is much harder to predict, with agriculture and land use accounting for about “a fifth” of the world’s emissions – whose volume is “hard to estimate”.

Peter Coy, the New York Times business and economics columnist, writes about recent developments around the discovery of so-called “natural hydrogen”. Unlike hydrogen that is “locked up” with oxygen in water molecules and in fossil fuels like propane, “natural hydrogen” exists freely in nature, with potentially “hundreds of millions of megatons” in the earth’s crust. If only 10% of it is accessible, that would last “thousands of years at the current rate of consumption”, Geoffrey Ellis, a research geologist for the US Geological Survey in Denver, tells Coy.

For Reuters, Matthew Spencer, global director of landscapes at the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), proposes some effective “incentives” to protect African forests. He notes: “Very poor communities can and do decide to give up their forest land to industrial agriculture or logging if they see no other way to making a livelihood.” He continues: “That is why IDH is trying to ensure that the communities get some small financial rewards for taking steps such as halting slash and burn in high forest areas, patrolling the forest to ensure compliance and restoring old illegal mining sites.”

In the Scotsman, Lesley Roarty, legal director with Turcan Connell, comments on proposals to build “ever taller wind turbines across Scotland”. Maximising renewable resources will be key “not just in hitting climate change targets”, but also in “reducing the vulnerability of our energy system to international price fluctuations”, she writes.

Meanwhile Sun columnist Clemmie Moodie writes: “20% of 16 to 24-year-olds are vegan…and we should laud them for their principles.” However, she continues: “A meat ban won’t save the planet…better meat will.”

New research investigates the past and potential future changes in “sequential tropical cyclone hazards” – where two tropical cyclones (TCs) make landfall close together and “can induce sequential hazards to coastal areas”. Focusing on the US, the researchers find that “the chance of sequential TC hazards has been increasing over the past several decades” in many locations. Under a “moderate” emissions scenario (SSP2-4.5), the chance of hazards from two TCs impacting the same location within 15 days “may substantially increase”, the study finds, with the return period decreasing over the century from 10-92 years to 1-3 years along the US east and Gulf coasts, “due to sea level rise and storm climatology change”.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s role as a major player in the global nuclear power sector “has remained largely below the sanctions radar, despite dependencies on Russian nuclear technology, uranium supplies and handling of spent nuclear fuel”, a new study says. The researchers analyse the state nuclear company Rosatom and its subsidiaries as “tools of Russian energy statecraft”, mapping the company’s global portfolio and categorising countries where Russia is active according to the degree and intensity of dependence. The study finds that “the war and Russia’s actions in the energy sector will undermine Rosatom’s position in Europe and damage its reputation as a reliable supplier, but its global standing may remain strong”.

While long-term ice-speed change has been measured in Antarctica over the past four decades, there are “limited observations of short-term seasonal speed variability on the grounded ice sheet”, a new study says. Filling this gap, the researchers assess seasonal variations in ice flow speed on 105 glaciers on the west Antarctic Peninsula using Sentinel-1 satellite observations spanning 2014 to 2021. They find an average summer speed-up of 12%, with maximum speed change of up to 22% on glaciers “with the most pronounced seasonality”. The authors conclude that “seasonal speed variations must be accounted for when measuring the mass balance and sea level contribution of the Antarctic Peninsula, and studies must establish the future evolution of this previously undocumented signal under climate warming scenarios”.